Reading Comics #90 "Geoff Johns in Brightest Day"

Five years after Green Lantern: Rebirth and countless developments later, Geoff Johns wrote the stories included in Green Lantern: Brightest Day, titled after the bi-weekly Brightest Day series that followed the Blackest Night event but in truth a culmination of the story he began when he first started writing in this franchise.

Rebirth famously posited that Parallax was not simply what Hal Jordan became after going mad during the events of "Emerald Twilight," but was rather the entity of fear itself, imprisoned by the Guardians of the Universe within the Central Power Battery of the Green Lantern Corps.  Geoff expanded on the themes already established by other creators in subsequent stories, for instance bringing new significance to the yellow ring of Sinestro and Carol Ferris' sometimes transformation into Star Sapphire.  Instead of isolated developments, Geoff saw the beginnings of a whole spectrum of power rings, and a corps for each of them.  The Sinestro Corps was obvious enough, and the source for a whole storyline.  The Star Sapphires, as the wielders of the yellow rings represented fear, were all about love.  Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris are the two most famous comic book characters to never end up happily ever after.

The Red Lanterns were another development from existing material, representative of rage, a reaction against one of the Guardians' most grievous errors in its initial efforts to bring order to the universe, when they originally relied on the emotionless robots known as the Manhunters.  There were also the Blue Lanterns, representing hope, the Orange Lanterns representing avarice (Larfleeze being Geoff's greatest addition to Green Lantern lore), and the Indigo Tribe representing compassion.

Just as Geoff figured out what Parallax best represented, he also saw what Ion was.  Ion was a concept introduced during Kyler Rayner's time as the torchbearer, when he was apparently the last of the Green Lanterns.  Ion turned out to be willpower's answer to Parallax.  Willpower is what the Green Lanterns represent.  It's said to be the purest of all motivations.  (There's a whole Green Lantern and Philosophy where you can read about this layer of the franchise, which I've previously written about.)

Before the New 52, where there's literally a series called Green Lantern: New Guardians, the storyline featured in Green Lantern: Brightest Day was the first tale called "New Guardians," and features all these different ring-bearers coming together at the prodding of Krona, the Guardian who created the multiverse when he decided to look at the moment of creation, which directly led to the antimatter universe where the first yellow ring was forged.  (I know, it really does begin to sound like fantasy, like Lord of the Rings, when you talk about Green Lantern like this.)  Krona is trying to collect all of the entities who represent the spectrum Geoff has fleshed out.  In the Brightest Day series itself, the white lantern glimpsed in this collection has more significance, in case you were wondering, just as it plays a major role at the end of Blackest Night, when the benefits of blending the spectrum are first discovered.

Green Lantern: Brightest Day also features Sinestro becoming less a villain and thus more of the character readers of the New 52 relaunch will find familiar.  There's also a lot that fans of the 2011 movie will find familiar, which I suspect was deliberate.

Reading this and Rebirth apart from the rest of Geoff's run has a way of putting a strong focus on everything he's accomplished, how he's enriched the mythology.  The story in this collection may not work entirely on its own, but it's a milestone and will certainly help anyone to see how much Geoff Johns has really accomplished.

By the way, the specific issues included in Green Lantern: Brightest Day are Green Lantern #s 53-62.